Personal Balance – The Life Stream

The Life Stream

As we “row, row, row our boat gently down the stream” we may come across stretches of rapids, deep dark gorges, open sunny spaces, and the occasional sandbank or “hazard”. We may need to “streamline our tactics” or “bridge a gap” to create links, or call out for a line to be thrown when a current gets stronger than we feel we can manage. Sometimes banks can be fortified, a dam added to create more space for recreational purposes…… The metaphors can be fun to play with!

The “life stream” in our Lifestream Associates name, is the broad stream of all our human capacities. This mega stream consists of innumerable little streams or currents that are our various individual capacities. Cognitive, emotional, kinesthetic, interpersonal, spiritual, even entrepreneurial – these little streams flow on, sometimes relatively independently, through the various levels of our human development. They are our multiple intelligences, and we utilise them for the fulfillment of our various needs and desires.

Various human capacities together constitute the individual who, in a Lifestream coaching program, may choose to work with one or more of these elements of the overall “flow”.

The different currents move forward in anything but a linear, even progression. If one or two “streamlets” are ahead of other capacities, this might create an opportunity to combine existing strengths and competent “streams” of life with aspects one may wish to strengthen.  -A coaching conversation can clarify and identify such possibilities and strategies.

If our needs are not being met, it may be because the right match of skills and capacities has not been employed in the service of those needs. For example, if we are spending energy acquiring status symbols instead of fulfilling a deep need for intimacy, then we may find ourselves feeling empty or desperate. A coach can encourage us to explore and then to bring about a “match” of needs and resources which then creates a greater sense of happiness and fulfillment.